Revealing the Hurt

There is a driving force that makes you act the way that you do. It is usually something you built around a ‘hurt’ that you have perceived you were inflicted with. Today, we’ll begin revealing that hurt and see how it affects every aspect of your life.

We have previously considered the prophetic messages about the coming Messiah (see Introducing the Messiah) and added to that a theological discussion about who Christ is (see Who is the Savior). Now, I could stop right here and say, ‘If you want a great life, just emulate Jesus.’ And that would be true.

However, most of us created ‘meanings’ about life when we were very young that have distorted the way we look at the world, and we have drummed up patterns to deal with the dangers we believe are confronting us. They are buried so deep in our psyche that we live lives in an always automatic way of being, which plays out in our unconsciousness.

So, even though we may be saved, we have a have a self-inflicted wound that drives us back to our old sin patterns. Indeed, most of these patterns are performed unconsciously. Wouldn’t life be better if we didn’t have to continually go to battle with ourselves?

Our wounds begin in our youth. In fact, they were first handed down to us in the Garden of Eden (see A Devilish Indoctrination). The Great Liar (Satan), planted the wounding seed when he convinced Eve, and ultimately Adam, to disobey God by convincing them that He was lying to them. They disobeyed because they thought they could be something more, god-like.

Instead, Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace after committing that first sin – shamed and afraid of His rejection. How does this play out?

We are composed of a body (molded from the same dust as the stars) which is meant to be a temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19), a soul (mind, will and emotions), and a spirit (a piece of God that vivifies the body and functions as our God-connection). In God’s plan, the body is subject to the soul, and the soul to the spirit.

The devil’s strategy is to break that hierarchy by stealing your soul. He does that by distorting your soul with lies until you lose all memory of your innate goodness. This ‘distorted’ soul does the Adversary’s bidding, by yielding to the desires of the flesh, leading to corruption, and it oppresses the spirit.

Satan spins a complex multi-layered web to capture your soul, to steal you from God, by keeping you out of your eternal home by persistently egging you on to sin. Subsequently, you begin to judge yourself as inadequate (‘not good enough’) and unlovable. This is at the root of every problem that you have…

This warped way of thinking has been passed down through every generation – beginning with Cain. (see The Bad Seed). The result? People scurry throughout their lives searching for acceptance and love, which they don’t think that they deserve. They create laws for people to follow to gain acceptance from other humans.

They replaced the Law of God with the laws of Man, which dictated how one must think and or act, in every conceivable situation, laws now twisted and so voluminous that they have become impossible to adhere to.

We aren’t born with seeds of doubt or a spirit of rejection, we must be indoctrinated with them. That’s where Mom and Dad come in (see What Are We Teaching Our Children?).

Our parents were indoctrinated similarly by their parents, and they likewise infiltrate their child’s brain with drivel that they think will help their kids to ‘fit in.’ This is an unconscious process, not a malevolent undertaking.

Nevertheless, the child is branded with other people’s opinions about truth, evil and good, instead of letting them form their own views through experience. Worse, many of these opinions contradict what he or she can sense through their innate knowledge of right and wrong.

And let’s not forget the malevolent mental drubbing taking place by government, media and public schools.

Usually, by the age of six, the devil’s work is firmly in place.

Some of what Mom and Dad indoctrinate, may clash with what you need; e.g. maybe you’re afraid of the dark, but they make you cry your way through it, or they refuse to feed you when you’re hungry because it’s not dinner time. Your parents aren’t being hostile, they are basing their decisions on what some ‘expert’ told them.

But you’re just a kid. All you know is that the people you love aren’t meeting your needs. Worse, you might begin to think that there might be something wrong with your needs or with you for having them – especially if your parents are punishing you regarding them as well.

Nevertheless, kids are smart. They invent ways to get their needs met – either by ‘acting out,’ or by memorizing their parent’s ever-expanding list of ways that they are supposed to be, to make them acceptable and lovable. In other words, they’re learning to become someone who they are not.

The children create a mental construct, (ego), to index all of these ‘necessary behaviors.’ It is a defensive cocoon of conformity for being protected from pain – a creation to help them compensate for a lack that never existed. (See Evolution of the Dark Mind)

Ego drives its host by playing on its fears and desires. It grows a voice that says the world is a dangerous place – a place to be survived, not lived.

However, this ego begins to feed on the power the child has given it; but then it becomes resentful because it knows that its very existence depends upon its host’s perceived need for it. Thus, it begins to berate its host with their ‘imaginary flaws,’ to increase their feeling that ego is necessary to their survival.

Eventually, the child identifies with ego, believing its voice is his or her own. They don’t question the voice and come to forget that they created it, not realizing that it only survives through their faith in it.

When ego is in charge, your soul takes a back seat. As it pummels you with your ‘flaws,’ you either go into hiding or try to change – neither being an effective solution. And you can’t fix them, because they are imaginary!

Ego then contaminates all of the information you receive from your God-given brain, so that all you perceive are altered meanings / realities, which you accept as truth. As a result, your life is brimming over with anxiety. In that state, you will never pursue a good life.

That voice in your head wants to keep control over you continually, so it goes to war with your past and future, in addition to ruining your present time. It creates a darker past with you at fault (your Life Story) and presents a future with no hope. Suffering sets in.

When you listen to ego, you are separated from God – just what Satan wanted…

You drag your Life Story into present time, and your preoccupation with it keeps you from living, because life only lives in the ‘now.’ We try to bring comfort to the child we were in the past, feeling unlovable and inadequate, looking to fix problems that lived in that same past (see The Past Sure is Tense).

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Pr. 23:7 NASB

You tend to isolate yourself. Your life mirrors what’s going on in your head, which is a miasma of meaningless thoughts that has you running from what is real. You become agitated and strike out; and you take on a victim mentality so as to not be responsible for how your life is turning out.

Your only real sin is making yourself suffer and throwing your life away. Definitely not what God wants:

“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new…” Is. 43:18, 19. NKJV

When you live in the past, the conversation in your head becomes a series of regrets: ‘if only I would have done ___;’ ‘If only I would have married___;’ ‘If only I wasn’t so___,’etc. And life just keeps passing you by.

Just the ways ego likes it, because it can’t control present time.

What kind of life is this? It’s painful. So, we add addictions, distractions, change jobs, relationships, or geographic locations. The pain remains. We become victims of a false reality where we exist as a perception of smallness, ineptness, and surrounded by problems.

As our lives progress beyond childhood, we encounter major events and interactions with others whom we perceived bigger-than-life or more powerful than we thought we were. We assigned false meanings to these events.

Subsequently, we avoid events / people that we judge to have the potential to bring suffering. Thus, we have a life void of challenges that might bring growth and is also filled with mediocrity and loneliness.

This isn’t the life God wants for you. To be continued…

Goodnight and God Bless.

Evolution of the Dark Mind

Previously, we looked at how a child (along with a little help from the devil) creates a mental construct called ‘ego,’ (see What Are We Teaching Our Children?), that is supposed to remind them how to conform to the ways of the world, so as to not stand out as some oddball that might be considered unacceptable or unlovable.

Subsequently, life becomes more about survival than living. The voice of ego starts out in a manner that seems protective, but then it takes a dark turn. It begins to remind the child of its imaginary flaws, so that he or she feels they must obey this voice, in order to survive a supposedly dangerous world. Worse, they begin to identify with that voice as their own – forgetting that they created this ego.

You too were a child. There is a distinct possibility that some ego is living in you. Do not blame yourself. You were too young to know what was happening and could not have known how to protect yourself if you did.

This ego, a ‘Dark Mind,’ if you will, is always assaulting the miraculous mind that God gave you – contaminating it with lies that act as filters, which distort your consciousness, altering the meanings of all the incoming information to your brain. The Dark Mind is not your real mind. It works within it but exists outside of it. It only exists because of your faith in its reality and your assumption that it is your protector.

If you allow your Dark Mind to thrive, your soul goes into hibernation. And now, you’ve unconsciously broken God’s first of the Ten Commandments:

You shall have no other gods before or besides Me. Ex. 20:3 AMP

This is the ultimate Dark Mind strategy: It tells you that you are flawed so that you begin to condemn yourself. Then, it informs you that you need to hide those flaws (that you don’t really have), to avoid rejection. Furthermore, it shows you ways to fix those ‘bad parts,’ by giving you tasks to perform, that do not work. Why? Because you cannot fix a problem that does not exist!

The outcome is that you keep running blindly on a mission with no chance of success. The Dark Mind loves this, because you keep yourself in an anxiety-ridden state, to frantically try to manage your life – all the while plagued by thoughts of ‘Will this make me lovable?’ ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ ‘Will this make me acceptable?’ ‘Will this hide my bad parts?’ ‘What will others think of me?’

In other words, you make yourself suffer. You will find yourself drained of mental energy, suffering from confusion, losing yourself in daydreams and punishing yourself with criticisms over your illusory defects. That is how the Dark Mind keeps you from pursuing your hopes and dreams.

In this state, you are separated from God – either out of ignorance, or, by forgetting that God is always willing to help:

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phil. 4:5 – 7. ESV

Moreover, that voice in your head is not content with corrupting your present-time concerns, it will also reach inside your memories – making them bigger, darker, and more shameful. It weaves a tale of what it declares is your history (your Life Story), and then relentlessly beats you up with it, calling you a ‘loser.’

It tells you that you had a terrible life, that you were to blame, and that nobody understands what you went through except it. Equally as bad, the Dark Mind tells you that your future will look the same. More lies. But what does God say?

‘For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for peace and well being and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’ Jer. 29:11 AMP

However, instead of relying on God’s promise, most of us run with our Life Story, dragging it around like a ball and chain, blaming every disagreeable circumstance on it.

Life is found wanting; and you wait for something or someone to bring you happiness. Moreover, even if you should find a scrap of happiness, that mental parasite will say, ‘This isn’t it;’ ‘You’re not quite there;’ or, ‘This will never last.’

Here’s the bottom line: we make up this malevolent voice in our head, (suggested by and infused with the spirit of the Dark Mind), that bleats out, ‘The world sucks!’ ‘Other people suck!’ and ‘We suck!’ It keeps us in a perpetual state of emergency, so that we cannot stop and see what is real…

God could superimpose His voice at any time, but He will not violate your free-will choice to listen to that voice in your head. Also, when you are so busy trying to survive on your own, you can’t hear His voice.

But we cannot look to darkness for clarity. Yet, we do, and so we suffer, which serves no purpose, when that suffering is created by our own thoughts. That type of anguish has nothing to teach us.

Most of our suffering comes from being attached to the ego’s false embellishment of our past – which is our Life Story about the upset, unhealed child within, who is lonely, scared and feeling unaccepted. Worse, we are wasting our lives trying to fix that child’s non-existent problems. They are in the past after all.

Suffering, in other words, is a result of not accepting our true selves, or the reality of the world around us. Instead, we cling to our illusions. God warns us of this very thing:

…if sinners entice you, do not consent. Pr. 1:10 NKJV

That voice in your head is the sinner of the worst kind, because it was fashioned by the author of sin. You are in a situation that you cannot fix by yourself; but you’ve got all the help that you need:

You came near when I called you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’ You have taken up my cause, O Lord; you have redeemed my life. Lam. 3:57, 58. ESV

However, if you don’t reach out for God, how will your life look if you are infested with this Dark Mind?

It becomes one that is lived in fear of false threats, animated by knee-jerk reactions of self-defense. And you avoid any challenges in life that you have perceived to have a potential to trigger past suffering – stunting your growth and keeping people at bay. Thus, your ‘now’ and your ‘tomorrow’ become self-fulfilling prophecies of your ‘yesterdays:’

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Pr. 23:7 NASB

Stuff happened to us in life. We, (with a little Dark help), made a decision about the event or about ourselves; and it altered the way that we felt about ourselves, others, or about life itself – and our lives changed as a result.

I was not immune to this dismal cycle. At the tender age of seven, I got into a front yard brawl with the neighbor boy. He had me pinned to the ground when my father drove up after work. He took one look and walked into the house. Dad thought that was the right thing to do to toughen me up.

I decided that he didn’t love me, and it altered our relationship until the day he died. I extrapolated my computation to include an assumption that if the person I loved the most didn’t love me, then I must be inherently flawed. And I suffered for decades – all due to a single misunderstanding.

Whatever any of us chose to do in the past under stress, we did it because we were afraid. I was scared to ask my father if he loved me; I was frightened that he just might say ‘no.’

No one deserves condemnation for being afraid; but it is our responsibility to get past our fears, by invalidating their roots, so that we can be free of our reactionary responses. This is vital because the lies we’ve woven around events and people are far more damaging than the reality that we have distorted…

You might say to yourself, ‘Well, that certainly wasn’t very uplifting.’ It wasn’t meant to be. It is intended to put you on notice that God cherishes you, but He cannot connect His love to you, as long as you are tethered to the devil. And everyone is, at one occasion or another. Throughout time, Satan has stolen just about everyone’s soul. Whether that theft is temporary or eternal, is entirely up to you.

The devil’s strategy is to break up God’s intended hierarchical relationship between spirt, soul and flesh – where the spirit is to rule over the soul and the soul over the flesh. He distorts your soul with lies until you lose all memory of your Jehovah-instilled innate goodness. Then, the soul does the adversary’s bidding, yielding to the desires of the flesh that run counter to your spiritual direction from God.

A death spiral begins:

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” Jn. 10:10 NKJV

Satan takes his agenda most seriously. He lives to hurt God. The only way that he can do that, is by stealing His children from Him. The devil teaches his victims to rebel.

As we continue on our spiritual journey, we are going to dissect his strategies and enlist the Creator of the universe to defeat and defang him. And you will remain in the space where God can connect His love to you for all time…

The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the devil’s works. 1 Jn. 3:8 CSB

Goodnight and God bless.

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

We will always keep our focus on our intent, to the best of our ability, to be in a place where we can connect to God, as He cherishes us.

In the beginning, we learned of how God created a perfect world for living a perfect life. Then, we saw how that was stolen from us by the transgression of Adam and Eve, and how the consequences of that ‘original sin’ was passed down from them, to their firstborn child, Cain.

Next, we examined the nature of the sin, including one facet of it that Cain indulged in – anger.

Today, I would like to look at how these sins, born of lies, may be perpetuated in the 21st century; but first, let us look at the nature of ourselves as God created us:

We were made in the image of God, that is, in the likeness of His Spirit, because Jehovah is a Spirit being (Jn. 4:24). That portion of ourselves is a piece of God’s Spirit, which is our life force – keeping us alive and providing a communication channel between Him and ourselves. Our spirits are housed in flesh.

God also gave us a soul, which is the part of us that thinks – consisting of our mind, will and emotions. The soul is what makes each of us unique. It transcends the brain and body, because we can watch ourselves think.

God tells us that to live a good and happy life, we should let our spirit rule over our soul and body (Gal. 5:16 – 26). Why? Because God always tells the truth (Heb. 6:18).

On the other hand, our body does not think; it only follows its desire to feel good, even if what it would have you do to achieve that might be harmful. Our soul can also be obsessed with deleterious types of pleasure.

So, if the body and soul cannot be trusted, our senses cannot always be trustworthy; and neither can the suggestions of the soul, who interprets what our senses mean, to fulfill its own agenda…

Our Creator placed a physical heart within our bodies – vital to our survival. However, it is just a muscle; it has no spiritual function. Yet God refers to our ‘heart’ repeatedly in His word – to love Him with it, that He examines it to make sure we are on the right path, that He will fill the desires of that heart, and that it reflects our true selves.

What Jehovah is referring to, is our spirit, our True Heart. This is the place we must listen to, protect, and keep sacred.

Adam and Eve did not listen to their True Hearts. They forgot about them, as do almost everyone else throughout the ages…

Yes, we are all born with the stain of Adam’s sin. Yet, God does not hold us accountable for it until we become aware of our malady. Thus, babies and young children are innocents. Moreover, if they grow up in a godly family, there is a good chance that they will seek out the cleansing of Christ at a young age and be rid of it.

Unfortunately, followers of Jesus do not occupy a majority in this world. Most innocent children are subjected to the secular worldly indoctrination, through ‘unconscious parenting,’ by the same deleterious process that was fed to them by their own parents.

We are not born with seeds of doubt or a spirit of rejection, but with a True Heart – created in love, to be love, and to spread love. As small children, we followed our spirit with glee and experienced our world without filters of judgment. But then, something happens…

The parents that are not aware of their own dark rules, handed down to them from their parents, begin brainwashing their children – thinking that they are doing the right thing by making these perfect kids mold to the ways of the world. They hope that they are sparing them from the suffering that they endured as kids.

This is not a malicious process. It is a process of generationally cultivated unconsciousness. The indoctrination begins subtly, without the child perceiving it. The first wave consists of the inculcation of ‘family values,’ based upon the opinions of others – teaching the kids what is good / bad, beautiful / ugly, true / false, and what has value / what does not.

It teaches our children to stop listening to their True Hearts, which is detrimental, because that is where the truth lies:

“I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” Jer. 31:33 NKJV

The parents then add layers of the laws of man upon the children, and they begin to sense a contradiction between the truth in their heart and what they are being forced to conform to. So, they begin to question the value of their own opinions and finally, the value of themselves, and it hurts.

This is the devil’s work in perpetuity: the kids do not believe they are good people (not true), and look to follow other people’s invented rules, hoping that they will be perceived as good and acceptable.

Essentially, they are following bogus dictates, so that they can fix a problem that does not exist – which is unsolvable!

And the unconscious parenting does not stop there. Government and its tentacles (e.g. public schools and the media) take it upon themselves to be the ‘greater parents’, to rob them of free thought, in the pursuit of creating vacuous, mediocre conformity, to perpetuate their over-lording.

If I could talk to every parent, I would stress this point above of all others:

There is not one word that comes from the mouth of a parent that does not burrow its way into the head of their child.

Especially when they hear things such as ‘Why can’t you ever learn?’ ‘What is the matter with you?’ ‘You should know better!’ ‘How could you be so stupid?’ ‘I can’t believe that you’re my child!’

No wonder a child gains a sense that something is wrong with them, if the people they love the most treat them this way. We must be conscious of what we do or say. Our children may forgive, but they do not forget.

Most of this carnage takes place by the age of six…

God commands us to educate our children in godly ways:

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Pr.22:6 ESV

However, we are also commanded to present that education in a godly way:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger [do not exasperate them to the point of resentment with demands that are trivial or unreasonable or abusive; nor by showing favoritism or indifference to any of them], but bring them up [tenderly with lovingkindness and instruction in the Lord. Eph. 6:4 AMP

Yet, our children are clever. They adapt (in good ways and bad), to get their needs met for having a sense of being loved and accepted. This adaptation is an acquired mental ability to check off a growing list of behaviors that they hope will bring love and acceptance and keep the pain at bay.

This mental construct (ego), is a devil-enhanced voice in one’s head to help(?) them compensate for a lack that never existed. The children, (older now), use it to try to hide their ‘bad parts; by trying to change (‘I’ve got to improve!’) through oppressing their self-concocted delusions (‘I can’t let them see the real me!).

Just like their unconscious parents, they pretend that all is well, not ever talking about how they really feel; and this ego and the fear that it generates, sucks the life out of them. And they all but say goodbye to their true hearts…

We must learn not to be okay with that, to stand in the gap and put an end to this cycle.

The only way that we can bring the light to our children, is to embark upon that same journey ourselves – to regain consciousness by returning to our God-essence. That way we can be a loving, exhorting presence in their lives – impressing upon them that there was never anything wrong with them, that there is nothing wrong with them now, and there will never be anything wrong with them in the future.

This builds their self-respect and helps them see the perfection of God within.

Parents must help them see that everyone makes bad choices and teach them how to minimize that through the word of God, all the while affirming that who they are remains unsullied. Along the same lines, we must teach them that there are no failures, only lessons to be learned.

Finally, and most importantly, help them meet Jesus…

Goodnight and God bless.

birth of ego

We aren’t born with seeds of doubt or a spirit of rejection, we must be indoctrinated with them. That’s where Mom and Dad come in (see What Are We Teaching Our Children?).

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